Syrian army makes advances in southwest offensive

The Syrian army battled rebels in an important town in southwest Syria Thursday, a media unit run by its ally Hezbollah’s war media center said, as intensifying air strikes killed dozens of people in the area.

President Bashar Assad has sworn to take back every inch of Syria, and recapturing the southwest, one of the first hotbeds of the uprising against him, would leave rebels with only one remaining stronghold, in the northwest.

The area is in a “de-escalation zone” agreed last year by the United States, Jordan and Assad’s ally Russia to curb fighting. But despite American warnings that it would respond to an attack, it has not done so and Syrian opposition figures on Wednesday decried Washington’s “silence.”